nepali lessons & elephant rides

I cannot believe how fast time flies! Catching up on the past couple of weeks is a task that’s beyond daunting, but now that I’ve come to think of it, there are some pretty basic lessons I’ve learned in Nepal but haven’t shared, so before anything else I think its time I get a few things out in the open:

Lessons of Nepal

(To Be Continued)

1. Kathmandu is great, don’t get me wrong, but getting out of Kathmandu for a weekend of adventure that is way to easy to access?

Way better.

2. Elephants are cooler in person than you’d imagine.

And harrier.

3. Regardless of the seemingly endless supplies of energy/water from the Himalayas, Nepal receives virtually none of its own resources.

Translation: “load shedding”, or power outages are up to sixteen hours a day, every day, in the city and hot showers are a treat.

4. People spit in Nepal.

Now I’m not talking a little “ptew” off to the side when nobody’s looking. No, I’m talking about everyone, yes even old women, hacking up crap left and right,and often times planting it inches from your feet as you play human “frogger” trying to cross the street while keeping all limbs intact.

5. Nepal = dhaal baat.

I know this means repeating myself, but its pretty incredible to live in a placewith one staple food item. Rice and lentils anyone?

6. Chaarpi (bathroom) in Nepal is an interesting term.

On really exciting/rare occasions, you’ll come across a western toilet with toilet paper. If this is the case: celebrate! Though more often than not, you’ll befortunate enough to experience a squat toilet (which require some getting used to, but really aren’t that bad), or if you’re really lucky – a tarp on the side of the road! That’s right, three sides mostly blocking a little ravine from the sight of cars driving by, and the third opened up to the Nepali hills in the distance. At least there’s a view, yeah?

7. It’s wedding season.

Don’t be alarmed if there’s a full-blown band on the street in front of your house at five in the morning.

8. Enjoy the music as described in point “7”. It should be recognized as a welcome relief to the dog fights and roosters crowing.

Not too far back, our group of SIT students headed out of the hustle and bustle of Kathmandu for a week in Chitwan, a national park in the terai. It’s pretty incredible what kind of drastic differences Nepal’s geography includes. The terai is a flat, almost desert-like region, completely different from the mountainous Himals most would match up with their beautiful mental image of this tiny haven between India and Tibet.

We spent each morning similarly to any other back in Kathmandu – with two and a half hours of Nepali lessons. The language has consistently been a challenge, and it is constantly overwhelming to keep up with what we’re learning without falling too far behind. But at this point we were all stoked to be finished with our first test. In the afternoons, we hopped on some classic Nepali bikes (i.e. no gears/super oldschool/ rusty and rickety) and road down one of the dirt roads to visit an NGO (Non-Government Organization), community forest, or microfinance group. It was pretty awesome to finally get to go and visit people and essentially interview them (practicing our research techniques) instead of just reading out of a book, “learning” about development.

With SIT, our last month will be spent researching a topic of our choice for an Independent Study Project, so the last few weeks have involved plenty of scrambling for sources and topics for our first couple drafts of our ISP Proposal that we’ve turned in. So the field work and visiting/interviewing was definitely informative – but even more exciting was when we got dropped off between a couple of villages, left in groups of two or three students with instructions to find out about some part of these people’s lives (whether it be agriculture, water useage, etc.) Minor detail, few of them speak a word of English. So we were off to attempt our bad Nepali skills and ask as many questions as possible. Of course, with Nepali hospitality, many were more than happy to offer us a seat and answer our questions (even though we didn’t have a clue of what they were saying most of the time), and we got our first feel for jumping into the field.

Our last day of Chitwan brought along the real touristy-side of things. After an early morning of canoeing along the river dotted with alligators, we hopped on elephants for a safari through the jungle. (Pretty awesome, right?!) Unfortunately, elephants aren’t quite as comfortable as they may appear when you’re sharing the space with four other people, but the whole thing was pretty surreal regardless.

Before we knew it, we were back in the bus and on the windy road to Kathmandu.